this being our legacy
by starskipper
Summary: legacy is good and I'm just here to add sprinkles on the edges (aka just a couple things I noticed were left unexplained as of yet, in a series of short oneshots! Because it's impossible for me to leave things alone)
1. Chapter 1

_Iiiiiits a really short series of also short oneshots because Legacy (AND THE S10 TRAILER DID YALL SEE THAT? H) came out!_

 _The references in this chapter are to Legacy and the old Zelda CDI game, which… you should look up, if you haven't….. seen. It. Also sorry for the film direction/DM narration sentences I can only see this in pictures not words JFKSHL this is why I'm an artist by trade_

* * *

 _We fade in on a sunset over the Monastery. The monks are packing up for the day, drying their brushes and setting a small hood over the mural wall. It's sketchy - barely started. In fact, the monastery itself isn't quite finished in places. Amiable chatter can be heard, but just barely, until we get closer._

"What's… hey, what's the equivalent of 'my girl'?"

"Uh… my man? Nah, my... dude? Wait no-"

" _My dude!_ " Nya snickers, and then tries again, pitching her voice way down. "My duuude."

"I - ha! - I love you _my dude_ ," Jay says in a horrendous Australian accent.

"My _dude_ you're like, totally my dude, dude."

"Dude. Cha," Jay nods, a lot like Crush the turtle, but with none of the chill.

"TH- no, no we can't do that one. You can't do that one ("Oh ye of little faith," Jay scoffs). Uh… my…lad? _Bud_? There's not that many… my b- MY BOY."

" _MY BOOOY_ , TH- THIS PEACE IS WHAT AALLLL TRUE WARRIORS STRIVE FOR!" Jay cackles.

"BOY, IT SURE I- IT SURE IS BORING-" Nya can't finish the sentence, wheezing instead.

"I just wonder what GANON'S up to!" Jay gasps, making Nya laugh harder and rock back against the monastery steps.

"Nooooo!" she giggles. "No, I'll just have to settle for calling you incessant nicknames! You c-"

"Call me _King Harkinian Hyrule_!"

Nya loses it again, and Jay tries really hard to quote the game again, but definitely fails.

It takes them longer than it should to calm down enough to talk again, partly because they keep looking at each other funny and breaking out into laughter again. As they dissolve into quiet giggles, the last of the monks finally picks up his paintbrush and dips his head politely as he leaves, smiling and closing the gate. Nya's eyes are drawn to the unfinished mural, tracing the sketchy pattern across the wall.

"Looks like they're starting with recent events first, backwards chronologically. Look, there's the Firstbourne, and there's… I think that sketch is of the Iron Doom. They made it look cooler, somehow."

"Wow, yeah. These guys are good."

Nya shifts slightly, pulling one of her legs closer to her chest. "They're getting kinda close to the gap months, huh?"

Jay hums, suddenly distracted by a sliver of wood poking up out of the stairs. "Yeah. There's… but there's no reason they'd ask, or anything. You think."

"No."

The last of the sun fades over the mountains.

Jay pauses. "You okay?"

"Yeah, no, I'm just thinking. About something I heard Wu and Lloyd talking about earlier."

"Eavesdropping?"

"N- well, yeah," Nya says, nudging Jay's shoulder. "Lloyd didn't really like how the monks had decided to paint his dad." She gestures to the spot on the mural depicting a half-finished Garmadon, all red eyes and domineering smile. "Or that they decided to include it at all. By my understanding it was… uncomfortable, but Master Wu said something about fate, and confronting a problem head-on, and the value of respect versus remembrance, et cetera. I think his words were something like 'you cannot hide from reality forever', or something like that."

Jay hums again, quieter. "Can't hide from reality. But it's - it's not, really. Anymore."

"No, but it was."

…

"What if I don't want to remember?"

"I don't think he gave either of us that choice."

…

"You think we should tell him?"

Nya sighs, catching it in the middle. "I'm… tired of letting it eat at me, honestly. I'm willing to try if you are."

"I am too, but… no, I am too," he relents, rubbing his thumb over the tops of his fingers. "You- you know if we tell him, we'll have to tell everyone else?"

Nya ducks her head. "Yeah. Might as well, right? What's the - you know, how much harm can it do to them? With the year we've had."

"Right, right," Jay laughs, nearly digging his thumbnail into his finger hard enough to draw blood. "We… you know. Before we back out again."

"Yeah," Nya says, determined, and pushes herself up off the ground. "Look at us, healing and stuff."

"What? Unheard of. In this economy?" Jay stands as well, flashing Nya a grin and following her up the monastery steps and through the cluttered halls.

… he carefully fishes for her hand in the dark.

"We got this, Bluejay," she whispers, and knocks quietly on Wu's door.


	2. Chapter 2

_Sorry for literally always having Nya in my fics (((I am not sorry)))_

* * *

 _It's late again — just barely past sunset, trails of blue and burnt orange slowly draining from the cloudless sky. The monks have left; there were fewer of them today. Cole stands in front of the colorful mural, shifting one foot, while Lloyd, Kai, and Nya do who-knows-what to the beat-up old training dummy in the yard behind him. Nya notices Cole, and trots over, waving at the two to keep going._

"They're almost done with this thing," Cole remarks, amicably.

"Finally, tbh."

"How did you say that acronym without saying all the letters?"

Nya wiggles her fingers conspiratorially, mouthing the word "maaagic", to an audience of one single eye roll. Cole turns his attention back to the mural, switching his weight to the other side so a different foot scuffs the ground rhythmically.

Nya watches his slightly withdrawn stance, then squints at the mural and leans closer. "...You'd think with all the reference material we give them (she motions at Cole's face like she's holding a camera) they'd know what our faces look like. Look— lookit this, I apparently used to have a teeny tiny nose."

"Oh, no, you had the opposite."

"Hey! Listen though they also apparently thought your eyebrows fluff-ified with age. Lil' puberty Cole drawing has such baby brows."

Cole's mouth quirks up in a smile. "Sensei Garmadon also didn't have a _beard,_ that's what I was lookin' at."

"Whoa, what?! That's super weird. We gotta get them to fix that. Looks way too much like Wu 2.0."

"Robo-Wu or like, Wu with patch notes?"

"Patch notes. Patch 1: fixed bug where relay of information was severely delayed. Patch 2: beard."

"Patch 2: _beard_ ," Cole laughs, and keeps the smile for a bit longer on record, but it dissolves again. Nya draws herself back from the wall and follows his line of sight, tracing the misty swirls of drying paint.

"...hey. You and Yang aren't up there."

She struck some sort of chord. Cole shifts again. "No, nah." he blows air through his cheeks. "I think, 'cause, that fiasco was a thing where all the baddies came back, they thought it might be redundant, or something. I'm fine with that old man not being on there."

"No, I mean, like, you're not up there," Nya stresses. "We promised we'd remember. To you and each other."

"It's not…" Cole looks away and draws into himself ever so slightly. "It's not a big deal, seriously. All of our other stuff is up there, I'm already up there a lot."

Nya huffs. "Alright, hang on. I'm gonna run to the garage."

"What f…"

 _She's gone. A few uncomfortable minutes pass, wherein Lloyd and Kai give up antagonizing the stuffed dummy and go back inside. It's getting dark, anyways._

"You ran off. What's that about?"

Nya tosses him a can of spray-paint. "Blacklight," she says. "Only shows up under a UV lamp like this one. I may or may not have used some on the decals on your new Earth Driller."

"...alright? Cool, first of all, I'm gonna need you to show me. Second, okay? So you…"

"So, you _put_ yourself up there," Nya says firmly.

"What? _No_ , no, I couldn't, it would—"

"It won't ruin the paint, and it's invisible unless you're looking for it. And it's _our_ story — yours. Not theirs. Fitting, I think."

"Nya I can't, it's… not my mural…" he finishes lamely, turning the spray paint over in his hands and studying it, deep in thought. Definitely already considering what the painting would _look_ like, if he were to do it.

"I won't make ya," she grins. "But I _will_ keep Master Wu busy. Besides, this place is too new. 'Bout time someone put a personal touch on it."

Nya half-skips inside, leaving Cole with a can of spray paint, a blacklight, and an expression somewhere between gratitude and mortification.

—-

 _A stroke, a pause. Bright purple drips onto a dark floor and floods the minuscule cracks on his palms, disappearing when it leaves the spotlight. The hand brushes loose hair away, streaking it with the same bright purple, touching his own sickly green scar. Some clock gently chimes two am, though no one really hears it._

— _-_

It's nearly light again when he comes back inside, but Nya shoots straight up from her position on the couch, bouncing in place.

"So?"

"So, were you up this whole time?"

"I'm not legally required to give you that information. What'd you do?" She whispers excitedly.

Cole can't conceal his grin this time, already moving to go back outside. "C'mon, I'll show you."

Cole switches on the blacklight, shaking its sputtering battery and backing up a ways to illuminate the whole center wall. He lets out a satisfied breath, unlike Nya, whose own catches in her chest.

"Wow," she whispers. Unable to really say anything more, she says it again. " _Wow."_

The mural swirls into the new glowing art, an almost continuous line of purple accented by drips and splatters. It's a beautifully stylized image of one memory Nya can't forget, just in the final minutes, of an endlessly joyful group hug, real tangible Cole slightly off-center, their family clinging to him and each other like a lifeline. The lines curve into each other, sending the flow of the piece inward — even as they seem to fade off into little cartoon ghosts. Something's written in cursive above it on the top edge of the wall — it takes a minute, but Nya recognizes it as "remember".

She pulls herself away from the graffitied mural and stares at Cole, who's nervously fiddling with the blacklight. "You like it?" he asks, for all the world looking like he'd just given her a picture to put on the fridge. Fridges aren't nearly grand enough.

"It's _amazing_."


End file.
